Art Pyster

Master's Degrees in Software Engineering: An Analysis of 28 University Programs

The software engineering institute published the last reference curriculum for a masters in software engineering in 1991. In 2007, a coalition from academia, industry, and government began creating a new reference curriculum. An early step was to establish a baseline of graduate education by surveying 28 masters programs in software engineering. The survey was largely limited to US schools. Key findings showed that the universities viewed software engineering largely as a specialization of computer science, that faculty size is generally small with few dedicated professors, and that new masters programs continue to start despite the decrease in computer science majors over the past few years. We used the IEEE Computer Societys Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) to structure our analysis of the 28 curricula, focusing primarily on courses and topics required or semirequired of all students. (A course is semirequired if there is at least a 50 percent chance a student must take it.) Major findings show wide variation in the depth and breadth of SWEBOK coverage in required and semirequired courses, less than 40 percent of all programs requiring an introductory course on software engineering, and many universities having required and semirequired courses that are peripheral to SWEBOK.

A Research Agenda for Tradespace Exploration and Analysis of Engineered Resilient Systems

This paper describes the activity of a workshop on Data-Driven Tradespace Exploration and Analysis: A Key Technical Thrust of Engineered Resilient Systems (ERS). The workshop was attended by 40 academic, government, and industry researchers and practitioners involved in tradespace exploration for a variety of engineering domains. The one-and-one-half day workshop sought to develop near and far term tradespace technology research recommendations for the ERS Priority Steering Council (PSC) Lead. To determine promising research areas, workshop attendees were asked to describe desired tradespace capabilities, the associated current approach and its deficiencies, and gaps between the two states. These research areas were summarized in statements of need, supporting rationale, and investment timeframe. Resilience in the context of ERS is more than robustness; resilience implies that when the system is placed into an environment in which it was not originally intended to operate, after some degradation in performance, the system can be adapted or reconfigured to perform at its intended levels. To support design for resilience, more alternatives must be generated earlier, considered longer, explored over multiple, dynamic alternative futures, and searched exhaustively. The workshop described in this paper was organized to discuss current methods, process, and tools for performing these tradespace analysis related tasks and to better understand existing tradespace capabilities and their suitability for ERS.

Work in process: A Body of Knowledge and Curriculum to Advance Systems Engineering (BKCASE™)

This paper reviews the progress and content of the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK) and the Graduate Reference Curriculum for Systems Engineering (GRCSE™) products being developed as part of the Body of Knowledge and Curriculum to Advance Systems Engineering (BKCASE™) project initiated in September 2009. The version 0.25 of each product was released for limited review in fall 2010; version 0.5 of each product will be released for public review in fall 2011; and final version 1.0 of each product are due out in fall 2012. This paper reviews how these products differ from and build upon existing products, and recounts lessons learned after the first 15 months on the project.